Milka have mercy on Merci!

An Advent calendar is used to count the days of Advent in anticipation of Christmas. Many Advent calendars begin on December 1st. This Advent calendar has become quite a thing as gift in recent years (Lindt, Pickwick, IKEA, Oil & Vinegar, …). How it works: you open a ‘window’ each day until December and there is a gift in it. Each year I receive the Lindt one somewhere in November from a German partner…On days when I open the ‘window’ belonging to the date I rejoice the partnership! Man, that tastes good.

As I looked at Lindt’s activations online, I later on “coincidentally” (NOT! 😊) received advertising from Milka in the days approaching the Advent period, closer to Christmas and after Christmas as well. And there it struck me: what an interesting way to further build the ‘gifting’ association (or Category Entry Point in HBG-terms) for Milka.

In The Netherlands and Belgium Milka is not yet as much linked to the higher-level gifting domain, of which Merci is the standard-bearer. Merci currently owns higher-level special occasion gifting in the chocolate category. Both mentally and physically, so one needs a solid strategy to win some share from them.

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What did Milka do to start building a stronger link to the gifting association?

Milka developed quite an elaborate marketing strategy to start winning from Merci, consisting of sensorially value adding products (yes, multiple!), competitive pricing and communication. Let’s start with the communication part.

• November: Ads on my socials (YouTube, Insta) about Milka’s Advent calendar. Sweet kid happy to open his daily gift on the Advent calendar. One cannot avoid the purple here.
• Begin December: From beginning December this ad was alternated with an ad with the same kid and his chocolate Santa, of course a Santa with purple clothing, because hey we’re selling Milka!  (which the boy treats as a real toy, again a gift-cue).
• Mid December – End January: ads from Milka Pralines Thank You. This product is being gifted in several emotional ‘slice of life’-executions:
  • Elder husband thanks his wife for cooking [Milka Pralines Love You is gifted]
  • Teenager thanks mum [Milka Pralines Thank You is gifted]
  • Primary school pupil thanks sport coach in the rain [Milka Pralines Thank You is gifted]
• Onwards: What is interesting is that they have two other Milka Pralines products at your local supermarket as well: Happy Birthday and With Love. Of which I am quite sure I will get to see ads of those as well in my timeline soon… In addition, these three products are, when talking about the format of the Merci-box (you have it visually in front of you now, right?) identical to the one of Merci. So clearly, these products are meant to directly compete.

However, one could argue, if I have the real thing (Merci) for gifting, why would I change to Milka gifting options?

• Well maybe because they are even more focused on the specific gift occasion you’re looking for (not a generic Thank You / With Love but a Happy Birthday)?
• Maybe because the chocolates in their gifting boxes are made in cute, different shapes (a heart, a gift box, a flower)?
• Maybe they offer less adult flavours (milk chocolate is Milka’s flavour stronghold)?
• Maybe as they’re sold at a competitive price? (1 euro lower than Merci regular and 5 euros lower than a Merci gift box)
• Maybe they’re starting to build an association between Milka and gifting via their advertising in recent months without you even having noticed it…… Holy purple cow, that is smart😉  

Of course, a brand preference change doesn’t happen in a year, changing brand to Category Entry Points-linkage on chocolate gifting is a long haul-strategy. Still, the above shows Milka has sufficient added value-stories and angles ‘on the shelf’  to try to persuade you to make Milka become part of your evoked gifting set.  

‍What can AI bring to the table?

As a gift to this article 😉 I’ve requested Haystack’s Virtual Audience * to come up with some ideas for either Milka or Merci (I’m not engaged to either of them). I’m not going to explain Virtual Audience here in detail; in short it is a combination of search agents, multiple large language models, scraping (from the socials to the academics) and machine learning and -in this instant- I’ve leveraged it as a qualitative individual depth interview-solution. Within these interviews you ‘really’ speak and engage with avatars, all with different personality types. If you want more info, just get in touch.

Some ideas Avatar Fleur Janssen, 34, nurse (So, once more, she doesn’t exist, ‘she’ is made and speaks from available data) came up with:

• ‍“Maybe they could create some more themed boxes that are more specific to different situations we face in daily life. Like, I'd love something that says "You've got this!".
• ‍“they could play with the size options more. Sometimes Merci feels a bit too big for a small gesture, but too small for a more significant occasion. I know when I was thanking my preceptor after finishing my nursing orientation, I wanted something bigger than a regular Merci box but not as expensive as fancy Belgian chocolates.”

Jeroen Bakker, 45, Groningen sets clear boundaries:

• “It needs to look proper enough to give as a gift. Can't look too cheap or like regular supermarket chocolate. That's where Merci gets it right – it looks nice enough without being too posh.”

Kees van der Meer, 60, retired teacher:

• “The price would need to be similar though. I'm not going to spend much more than what I pay for Merci - it needs to stay in that reasonable range where you can buy it without thinking too hard about it. That's part of what makes Merci work so well for me when I'm shopping at Albert Heijn or Jumbo.”

Feels pretty genuine and authentic, if you ask me. Curious about which brand in the end is going to be on top. For now I thank you for ‘opening’ and reading this gift from my pencil. 😊